Posts Tagged ‘Ambient Studios’

Death Inc. had a great deal of style but it may never be substantiated. Ambient Studios, formed by by former Media Molecule, Criterion, and Lionhead employees, has confirmed that it will close its doors. Following the failure of the Kickstarter for the plague-ridden strategy game, Ambient offered alphas to paying customers in order to bring in development funding. That tactic hasn’t provided enough cash to keep the studio open though. All alpha backers will receive a full refund and, hopefully, the team will find new projects to work on soon.

Impossibly handsome plague-as-strategy game Death Inc might have missed its Kickstarter target, but it is far from dead, as is proven by their new in-house paid alpha thing, which is here. They’ve gone for a similar reward model to the Kickstarter, allowing you to get the game right away for a mere $10, right up to to an eye-watering $5000 contribution which includes everything from previous tiers, including t-shirts, artbooks, and your own in-game pub, as well as the right to call yourself “King (or Queen) Of The World”.

It’s been a very Kickstartery week at RPS central command land banana stand (with more to come, if you can believe it), but not all of it’s been good news. While Torment surged past its lofty $900,000 goal with such ferocity that we had to invent new numbers both to describe the amount it made and how quickly it did it, Project Awakened and now the equally promising Death Inc have fallen soberingly short. The RTS-ish 1660s freelance grim reaper simulator closed out its drive for blooooooood (or, I guess, money) at £122,711 – aka, not quite half of its £300,000 goal. So then, what is its hodgepodge of ambitious types from Media Molecule, Criterion, and Lionhead going to do now? The future’s not entirely clear, but one thing’s for sure: Death Inc hasn’t bitten the big one just yet.

With just a week left on the clock, I’m honestly surprised that the Death Inc Kickstarter has had such a muted response. It looks just like the sort of thing that should fly. Anyway, there’s a couple more videos for you to raise an eyebrow at, one showing multiplayer, and the other showing a few developer chums of Ambient (Sean Murray, Molyneux) talking about their interest in the game.

Intrigued by how plague ‘em up god-game Death Inc. will work? Intriguerate no longer! The Kickstarting strategy has released a demo, which you should (I am writing this before it’s actually gone live, so finger’s crossed, eh?) be able to get your hands on it here. Have a play! I mean why wouldn’t you?

A thick, sweetly-stenched miasma must have descended upon me, or perhaps it was the clouds of flies buzzing around the disease-ridden project, but whatever the reason, I neglected real-time sickness spreader Death Inc. when rounding up Kickstarter projects yesterday. There’s plenty to see in recent updates though, including a second demonstration of the current prototype, which lacks the final art style but shows slick controls, tactical decisions and gives a good idea as to how the theme will translate into an actual game. There is also a Q&A video, which I’ve included below, and some lovely new artwork.

“Death Ink!” exclaimed my excitable friend, thinking my topic of conversation some kind of Grant Morrisonian meta-fictional idea where life and the black materials of printed word interweave. “No,” I said, “Death Inc.” And I explained that it was actually a light-hearted strategy and management thing about reapers, and the plague, and 17th century things, designed by people from Media Molecule, Lionhead, and Criterion. “Oh, well that still sounds interesting,” he decided. And yes, it did sound interesting when Ambient Studio’s Mr Hopper explained it to us, but the chat raised more questions about how such a game wouldy play, questions which the Ambienteers want to answer with their latest video of the game in action. See below for a look at the game’s prototype doing its infectious thing.

Death Inc. is a marvellous, horrible, brilliant, horrible idea. It’s this: “Guide Grim T. Livingstone, freelance reaper, through 1660’s England spreading fear, pestilence and most importantly, the bubonic plague.” You play a reaper in a cartoon 17th century, and your job is to harvest… people. Horrible, eh? But it looks so cute! Death Inc. is currently being developed by a team of former Lionhead, Media Molecule and Criterion devs – called Ambient Studios – and their mission is to create a “streamlined strategy, with no micromanagement or complex menus.” Their first game boasts a bunch of intriguing ideas, including the idea of “painting” your commands: “Paint with pestilence: Create routes to travel, areas to defend and flanking manoeuvres with simple mouse strokes.”

We’ve contact ambient for more information, because we suspect we’re going to want to keep a close eye on this one.